A little over a year ago I bought Chessmaster 8000 and was somewhat impressed with all the
tutorials and the look and feel of the game but I was very curious to know how strong the
engine was so I pitted it up against Fritz 6 in a 12
game match (read my report here). Fritz 6
totally outplayed Chessmaster 8000 in this match by winning 5 games to Chessmaster's single
victory with the rest of the games drawn for a 8 to 4 final score. Even after this trouncing
I was impressed with the Chessmaster program due to it's teaching ability and the playing
personalities. Chessmaster's personalities are much more fun to play against than the levels
Fritz offers.

Chessmaster 9000 Enhancements

There are a number of changes introduced in the
Chessmaster 9000 program. Even more tutorials have been added including "The Psychology
of Competition Chess" course taught by IM Josh Waitzkin and an Endgame quiz by GM Larry
Evans. A Blunder Alert feature has been added that can notify you when you make a significant
mistake. Even more chessboards and pieces (true 3D) have been added to the many it already
had. 10 new Grand Master personalities have been added but one, Garry Kasparov, was curiously
removed. A few of the lower rated personalities have also been remove. Most of these were
rated well below 1000. I thought Chessmaster 8000 had too many personalities in this range
anyway so they won't be missed. Maybe more ratings greater than 1500 should be added. An
Endgame Database which has all 3, 4 and some 5 piece endgames has been included. If you
choose the "Full installation" option when you install the program Chessmaster and all the
GM personalities will use this database to play perfect endgames. The Chessmaster 9000 engine
"The King" written by Johan de Koning has also been improved.

Another notable difference between Chessmaster 9000 and Chessmaster 8000 is the strength
of play of the different personalities. The ratings in Chessmaster 9000 are probably 200
to 300 rating points stronger than in Chessmaster 8000. So whatever your rating was playing
Chessmaster 8000, expect it to be 200 to 300 rating points lower when you play Chessmaster
9000. The Chessmaster team claims that they established the personality ratings by actual
games played against real people and other programs and that they believe they are accurate
to within 50 points of their "real world" USCF equivalent.

Chessmaster 9000 vs U.S. Champ

On 29-30 September 2002 Chessmaster 9000 played a 4 game match against the reigning U.S.
Open Champion Larry Christiansen. In each of the games Chessmaster used a different
personality. Chessmaster impressively won this match 2½ - 1½.

White

Black

Opening

Result

CM9000 (Alekhine)

Christiansen, Larry M

D41: Semi-Tarrasch Defence

0-1

Christiansen, Larry M

CM9000 (Fischer)

A30: English Symmetrical

0-1

CM9000 (Botvinnik)

Christiansen, Larry M

A28: English Four Knights

1-0

Christiansen, Larry M

CM9000 (Chessmaster)

A07: Barcza System

1/2

Chessmaster 9000 vs Fritz 6

Since Chessmaster's engine has been improved and did so well against Larry Christiansen I was
eager to see how it fared against Fritz again. I conducted this match just as I did the
previous Chessmaster 8000 vs Fritz 6 match.
Each program would use its opening book. Once out of their book they would have exactly two
minutes processing time for each move. No endgame databases would be used. Only one program
would be running on my 1.00 GHz AMD Athlon processor at a time. This is important because I
found that if both programs were running on the same computer at the same time Chessmaster
tended to hog the CPU and perform much stronger than Fritz. The match would consist of 16
games where each program would play 8 games with the white pieces and 8 games with black.

The first thing I noticed when the match got under way was that Fritz's opening book was
far more extensive than Chessmaster's. Fritz's book took it deeper into 9 of the games to
Chessmaster's 2. Once Chessmaster began evaluating the positions the evaluation numbers
(number of positions looked at and depth) looked similar to its last version. Fritz claimed
to be looking at about 5 times more positions than Chessmaster and it's depth of exhausted
levels was always higher than both Chessmaster's exhausted levels and critical lines, usually
by 3 or more levels! But there seems to be something bogus with this because of the 5
announced mates in this match Chessmaster announced 3 of them first! Also, when large
evaluation changes occurred in the games sometimes Chessmaster whould show the changes
first and sometimes Fritz would. It looked to me like the two programs were roughly evaluating
to the same depth.

Here are some notable positions that occurred in some of the games...

If Chessmaster used its Endgame Database it would have improved its results
in two of the games. In game 1 Chessmaster
missed a drawing opportunity when it move 57... Rh1? This allowed Fritz to cut his king off
from the defense of the pawn's queening square with 58. Re6! and eventually Chessmaster would
have to sacrifice his rook for the pawn and lose the game. If Chessmaster had just 2:24
instead of the allotted two minutes it would have found the correct continuation 57... Ke7!,
or if it was using its Endgame Database it would have found this drawing move instantly.

The second game that Chessmaster would have improved upon if it used its
Endgame Database is game 7. In the actual game Chessmaster played 101... Rg6? and
eventually drew the game by the 50-move rule. In this position black has a forced win
with 101... Re5! This move cuts the white king off from the defense of his knight and the
knight will soon fall. Even when I gave Chessmaster more than 15 minutes it did not deviate
from the incorrect 101... Rg6? Fritz, however, recognized 101... Re5! as the correct move
after only three seconds.

Game 5 was a very interesting game. Fritz was a pawn up and chasing
Chessmaster's king all over the board. During the game Fritz continually evaluated an
advantage of over two points but Chessmaster insisted it was close to an even game. In the
diagrammed position on the left Fritz evaluated its advantage to be 2.53. Chessmaster's
evaluation was 0.09. Who was right? On move 89 the game was declared a draw based on the
50-move rule. Chessmaster must have saw something in the position that Fritz didn't.

Game 2 was a game that Chessmaster evaluated to be close all the way until
the end. Fritz claimed a slight advantage for its black pieces. In this situation
Chessmaster's evaluation was correct but its play was not. Chessmaster played 58. Qc8+ but
probably should have played 58. Qb6 to trade off the queens. Without the queens this would
lead to an easy draw for both sides. Chessmaster would have a couple other opportunities
to trade off queens during the game but it refused to do so and Fritz showed it how the queen
and knight dominates the queen and bishop.

Chessmaster's evaluation of the rook/pawn ending shown above that occurred in game 9 was
much better than Fritz's evaluation. Fritz missed the win when it moved 60. Rxh6? Chessmaster
knew that the winning move was 60. Rg6! Even when I gave Fritz 15 minutes to see the error of
its ways it persisted on 60. Rxh6? After 60. Rg6! white should eventually get connected
passed pawns that will march down the board for the win. As the game went however, the
top right diagrammed position was reached. Fritz still thought it had a huge advantage,
evaluating the position as 2.69. Chessmaster's evaluation was 0.41. This is a typical
position where humans tend to evaluate better than computers. A decent human player can
look at this position and know that white can never queen the pawn. If the king goes down
it help queen it, black's rook will simply check it until it abandons the idea or triggers
the three-fold repetition rule. It's impressive that Chessmaster saw this. Eventually the
game was drawn by the 50-move rule. Two moves before the 50-move rule would occur Chessmaster
made a move that allowed Fritz the opportunity to queen the pawn - one move too late. I'm
not sure but I thought I saw the Chessmaster crack a smile.

In most of the endgames Chessmaster's evaluatation was more accurate than
Fritz's. Another example of this was in game 6. The game came down to a knight and pawn
versus a bishop endgame. Since the white king was in front of the pawn defending its
queening square, it was pretty obvious that black would never be able to promoted his pawn.
Fritz's evaluation in this position was -1.50 whereas Chessmaster's evaluation was -0.13.
Eventually the game was drawn by the 50-move rule.

Maybe the biggest blunder committed by Fritz in this match occurred in
game 15. In this position Fritz played 79. Rd6? in which Chessmaster responded with
79... Rg2! and quickly gained a huge advantage and won the game. I let Fritz evaluate this
position several times and it didn't come up with the same move every time. There is an
element of randomness in its choices. Sometimes it did come up with the correct move
79. Kd2 which should draw. This match was touch move so I had to accept its first
selection which lost it the game.

Conclusion

Fritz won this match 9 to 7. Fritz won 5 of the games, Chessmaster won 3 and there were 8
draws. Unlike the match against Chessmaster 8000, Chessmaster 9000 put up a much tougher
fight. Clearly Chessmaster's engine is much improved. Generally speaking it seemed Fritz
performed better in extremely complicated positions with lots of pieces on the board and
Chessmaster did better when the games entered the endgame. The results were too close for
me to say definitively that Fritz is the stronger program, especially given the fact that
Fritz had an opening book advantage and if Chessmaster had been using its Endgame Database
the result would be tied 8 - 8. I am very curious as to what rating this program will
earn with The Swedish Chess Computer
Association. It most certainly will move up the ranking list.